THE TIMES-DELPHIC Wed., Feb. 7, 2018
Vol. 137, No. 15
www.timesdelphic.com
PEYTON JOHNSON of the band the High School Girls sings during the Venus Rising event at Lefty’s Live Music. The event was co-sponsored by a Drake J-Term class. Read more on page 8. PHOTO BY HANNAH THOMAS | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
CAMPUS NEWS
Updated program allows more efficient reporting Jessie Spangler Editor-in-Chief jessica.spangler@drake.edu @jessiespangler3 Many students may not know that Drake has an anonymous reporting tool, and that it’s now easier to use than ever. EthicsPoint is a third party web portal that Drake pays to use to provide students and faculty with another way to make reports in a variety of categories provided on EthicsPoint, such as Violence or Threat, Sexual and Interpersonal Misconduct/Discrimination and Discrimination, Harassment or Bias. Reports have the option to include the name of the person making the report, or to stay anonymous, even through the EthicsPoint phone number, which is (877) 295-7940. “It’s another tool and another option for anyone on campus, especially for students if they’re not comfortable coming in,” said Katie Overberg, Drake’s Title
IX Coordinator. “It’s a way that they can start a process and feel comfortable that they’ve taken some steps and can go at their own pace.” Once a report is made, a staff member assigned to the category the report was made in will reach out to the individual, either with questions or to provide further resources, regardless if the report is anonymous or not. Communication is primarily done through EthicsPoint. People who make the report do not have to respond if they don’t want to. “If you say you want to go anonymously, it generates a report and a contact to an assigned Drake employee,” Overberg said. “For example, I get the sexual and interpersonal misconduct reports. Scott Law would get the one about violence and threats.” According to Venessa Macro, the Chief Administration Officer, EthicsPoint has been around for quite some time – since around
2008 or 2009. But it wasn’t until recently that changes were made to the reporting tool to make it easier for students and faculty to find, with the help of two students, first year Brittany Freeman and sophomore Senator-at-Large Samantha Bayne. “Making it clear on how it works and that we wanted to make people really understand that if you report from your email address, that you can communicate with a member of administration, but they don’t know who you are,” Macro said. “And that wasn’t really clear that that was a two-way communication, and we really wanted to emphasize that because that is a really nice feature to this tool. It allows us to follow up with questions and say, tell more about this, or the date that it happened.” After coming up with the idea of an anonymous blog where campus issues could be discussed and Overberg could be involved, Overberg told Freeman about EthicsPoint being “that resource
that no one really knows about,” according to Freeman. “I did some research beforehand, I was like okay well let me look it up and see what it’s all about and I, a. couldn’t really find it, and b. had no idea what I was looking at and I was like this is not conducive to someone who had just gone through trauma and is trying to report what had happened. So we kind of went from there and talking about what we needed to adjust with EthicsPoint,” Freeman said. The two students, along with Overberg and Mary Alice Hill, the Deputy Title IX Coordinator for Human Resources, worked with Drake IT Services to make the website more accessible and more user-friendly. A link to EthicsPoint can now be found on Blueview under the Student Services tab and on Drake’s website at http://www.drake. edu/ethicspoint/. “When you were clicking on things, it was really confusing as to how to actually do it. And the
problem is that if you’re doing it anonymously, there’s not much you can really do aside from telling the campus that it happened,” Freeman said. “There’s not really many punitive actions that come after it, so one of the things we wanted to work on is wanting to informing people that that’s what will happen. Say that they filed a complaint and they went with the anonymous aspect of it, that they would not have many actions after just saying it, unless they chose to release their name.” Having more people reporting things, even anonymously, is worth it, according to Freeman. “It’s never too late to report something. That’s really what we’re combating now is trying to brand EthicsPoint as something that people know when they’re talking about the issue at hand. That’s what we’re kind of moving forward to for second semester,” Freeman said.
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CAMPUS NEWS
Drake University, Mercy College create program for nurses New program allows Drake students to get CNA degree as an undergraduate Jacob Reynolds News Editor jacob.reynolds@drake.edu @jreyredsox96 Drake University and Mercy College are helping Drake nursing students become certified nurses more quickly. Drake and Mercy agreed to a new arrangement that would allow certain Health Sciences majors to be admitted into the Mercy nursing program after their third year, depending on their grades. Students would receive a Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences from Drake and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) from Mercy College in the same span it would take to earn one degree at one institution. “We are offering the joint degree as an option for students to earn two distinct degrees,” said Renae Chesnut, dean of the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. “Conversations began (with) Mercy because we had
some students who had left Drake after a year or two to go elsewhere to pursue a nursing degree since we do not offer a program.” Chesnut explained that in conversations with both Allen College, in Waterloo, and Mercy there were discussions on how students could stay at Drake for three years and then transfer to one of their programs to complete a nursing degree. “Because of the shift within the health sciences curriculum plan to switch required courses to the junior year and electives into the senior year, we were able to develop a reverse transfer approach and count some of the nursing courses toward electives in the health sciences program,” Chesnut continued. The new program will allow certain students who want to be a nurse and are health science majors to be admitted to Mercy College. The students will complete four, eight-week terms, and also includes a 15-week semester of clinical rotations,
according to a press release from Drake. By the time they graduate at the end of four years, students will have completed a combined 150 credit hours. Dr. Nancy Kertz, the dean of the nursing program at Mercy College, said the program would be an intense workload for students. “While the total number of credits for two degrees is higher by approximately 25-30 credits, students will be able to complete dual degrees within a four year period,” Kertz said. “The 12-month program is intense and rigorous, but dedicated students who are organized, motivated and academically strong should do well in the program. Due to academic and schedule demands, students will not be able to work during the 12-month period.” According to the press release, Mercy College’s 12-month program is the fastest path to become a bachelor’s prepared nurse in Iowa.
Chesnut said many students want to finish their degree in a timely manner. “In the past, the only way that they could pursue that was to either transfer as soon as possible, or finish their B.S. degree and then complete a few more years at a school that offers a nursing degree,” Chesnut said. “This joint degree pathway offers students the ability to stay at Drake for three years and then enroll at Mercy and complete the nursing degree in four years, which still allows them to earn a Drake B.S. degree.” For her part, Kertz said she looks forward to working with Drake students as they begin to work toward their future career as nurses. “Drake students will bring with them their university’s underpinning-‘….inspiration is that together we transform lives and strengthen communities.’ This inspiration aligns with the Mercy College Vision of being a ‘National leader for excellence
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in the delivery and innovation of health sciences education.’ That is what this partnership is about,” Kertz said. “Together, Mercy College and Drake University students can become leaders who meet the healthcare needs of the community at the local, regional, state, national, or international level.” Chesnut said the process might be competitive for nursing students interested in the program at Mercy. “We do not have any guarantees for admission or a specific number of students who will be allowed in to Mercy’s program,” Chesnut said. “While Drake students will apply for admission, we expect them to be very competitive in the application process for the BSN.”